KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has issued reminders to taxpayers and non-taxpayers reminding to file Income Tax Return for tax year 2018, as the last date for filing returns is November 30, 2018.
The officials at the revenue body as well as people in the government have reiterated that the deadline would not be extended.
It may be mentioned here the return filing reached 1.0 million till November 23, 2018 as against around 0.8 million filed in comparable period last year – an increase of 200,000 returns filed.
FBR in the reminder noted that at source deduction of tax from the salary does not make a person filer. The responsibility to file return can only be discharged after filing of the tax returns.
FBR mentions that in case of non-filing of tax returns, the taxpayer can be slapped fine under Section 182 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001; moreover the non-filer cannot purchase a property or vehicle valuing more than Rs5.0 million in addition to higher tax deductions.
Amid a decline in revenues, Pakistan has assured the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that its tax collection will soon get a boost as it has planned to utilize information being received under multilateral tax conventions and will also give a push to cases under litigation.
FBR officials met with a visiting IMF team earlier and briefed them about some corrective administrative measures that they were planning to take to enhance revenues. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation urged Pakistan to bring non-filers into the tax net.
Pakistan’s revenue system is strained with tax amnesty schemes, with the latest being amnesty for non-filers as usual.
According to the recently compiled Tax Reforms Commission Report, tax amnesty schemes are one of the major factors causing distortions in the system. In a democracy, the most important objective of taxation is to provide economic justice, which relates to distribution of tax burden and benefits of public expenditure, while maintaining vertical and horizontal equity. Taxation of the rich for the benefit of the poor is at the core of social democracy.
It encompasses, besides redistribution of wealth, such questions as treatment of weaker sections of society, for e.g., women, children, minorities, the disabled and unemployed. All these elements are missing in our polity. Successive rulers have used taxes as a tool to extort from the public as much as possible for their own comforts and luxuries.
The financial managers are caught up in a dilemma. On the one hand, there is mounting pressure to reduce fiscal deficit through improved collections and on the other, they are not ready to abolish innumerable tax exemptions available to the mighty.